Escaping the Friend Zone
by dannyboy23
Summary: Ollie Benson is madly in love with Lily Potter. Lily Potter sees him as her best friend. Abigail Clayton is in love with Ollie Benson. Ollie Benson sees her as the shy girl in his Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Rebecca Miller is crushing on Hugo Weasley. Hugo is more interested in parties. (Previously published on HPFF)


**Chapter One**

Looking out on the lake each night at sunset really is my favourite thing to do, there's nowhere that's really peaceful in the whole of Hogwarts except for this place and lucky for me no one really knows I come down here every night. It's not that I'm depressed or one of those teenagers with issues that feels close to nature or some shit like that I just like coming down here to think and take thirty minutes away from my utterly insane peers

"Thinking again Benson?" came the voice of Lily Potter from behind me. I turn and smile at her, she's absolutely gorgeous and the most sort after girl in the school "You really should do less of this; your brain might not be able to keep up and explode". I smirked as Lily stepped carefully along the four small rocks before the big one I was currently sat on. It was a late September night about four weeks after we came back to Hogwarts and Lily had been down here with me each night without fail. I felt myself blushing as I watched her go from rock to rock with a hard look of concentration on her face trying her best not to fall in. She was wearing one of my Quidditch hoodies, a short denim skirt and had her glorious red hair tied back and had no shoes on; she grinned up at me as she reached the last rock

I pulled her up and she sat down next to me and rested her head on my shoulders, I was finding it very hard to breathe at this moment in time. If you hadn't already guessed I am in love with this girl completely head over heels pathetic for her; she's my dream woman after all. Beautiful, kind, feisty, funny and intelligence I couldn't ask for better in a woman than the only daughter of the bloke who saved the wizarding world

We'd been doing this every night since we got back to school, Lily and I were best friends and had been since first year though I'd never told me about my special spot until the end of last year and she'd been nagging me about letting her come down ever since. I eventually caved in and now this is kind of our special little routine, I didn't mind as it meant more time spent with the girl of my dreams. I'm sure she doesn't feel the same way about me as I feel about her. She's Lily Potter for merlin's sake, why would she be interested in little old me that way? OK, I'm not the ugliest guy in the world I'll admit and I've been told by various ex-girlfriends that I was kind, funny and cute during our relationships and nine times out of ten the relationship only failed because my love for Lily got in the way

I'm not sure how long I've been in love with Lily, we're in sixth year and I realised I fancied her in the second year but this in love thing didn't come about until half-way through last year. It's not like a creepy obsessional love where I sneak into her room every night and watch her sleep it's the kind of love where everything she says I hang off every word, I get jealous when I see her with other guys but it's not like I go around hitting them (well except Scorpious last year but the moron had it coming and Lily hates him anyway).

"What're you thinking about" I ask her as she yawns, her head still resting on my shoulder

"Flobberworms" she says almost immediately. She lifts her head off my shoulder as I give her a weird look, she grins at me and my stomach does a backflip "Just they're so creepy and ugly looking, but how they're really important for gardens and stuff"

"How very deep Miss Potter" I reply

"Well thank you Oliver" she replies back resuming her position on my shoulder, we sit in silence for a few more minutes until she yawns

"Tired?" I ask her and she nods with her eyes closed as if she was about to go to sleep "Come on then let's get back, we have got that History of Magic essay to hand in tomorrow"

Lily groans as I jump down from our rock and hold out my hand for her to take. I lift her down and nearly drop her in the lake, catching her round the hips just as she's about to fall in

"Careful Benson" she says pretending to be annoyed "If the only daughter of Harry Potter is found dead in the river they'll all think there's some kind of uprising coming"

I chuckle sarcastically and walk on in front of her for a while until I notice how far behind she's lagging. I walk back to her and she looks as if she's about to fall asleep standing up, she gives me a pleading look and I sigh

"Get on then" I say crouching down as she climbs on my back and soon enough I'm giving her a piggy back to the castle well aware that she's fallen asleep on my back. We'll most likely get in trouble for being out after hours but I didn't really care at the moment, my main focus was getting back to the Common Room and getting Lily to bed.

Mainly because she's heavier than she looks, Lily's skinny but she sure does eat a lot and you can tell when you carry her. That's another feature of Lily's that I love, I wouldn't want a girl that refuses to eat for whatever reason and there's no danger of that with Lily she eats more than I do. We reach the common room without getting caught though the Fat Lady rolls her eyes and mutters "every bloody night" to herself as we entered the now empty common room

"Lily, Lily come on wake up" I say as I put her down on the couch "I can't go up to your dorm, the stairs will change to a slide again"

Lily laughed no doubt remembering an incident a few weeks ago; she'd fallen asleep so I decided to carry her to the dorm except the stairs changed into a slide as they always did when boys tried to approach the girl's dorm. To cut a long story short I ended up in a first year girl's dorm with my trousers around my ankles as Lily and her roommates fell about laughing

"I don't want to go up a flight of stairs" she groaned

"Well where are you going to go silly" I ask smiling at her, she gives me one of her evil looks and I know what she's thinking

"No, no, no you are not sleeping in my bed" I protest "Where the hell will I sleep?"

Lily pointed to the couch and gave me her puppy dog eyes until I sighed and said "fine" she got up excitedly and ran into my dorm which was at the top of a flight of stairs, it was then I realised I'd been had. According to Lily the boy's beds were a lot comfier than the girl's ones and she'd tricked me into this eleven times since the start of term. I conjured over a blanket with my wand and climbed onto the sofa and went to sleep.


End file.
